Campaign Finance

On Tuesday night in Dallas, Mitt Romney made one thing clear: he was not “just polishing the apple for T. Boone Pickens here,” he said, when he began his policy remarks at a fundraiser with Pickens, an oil and gas investor, by talking about energy.

The truth is, as Romney pointed out, he almost always starts talking policy by …

To win re-election, Barack Obama won’t be able to rely on the fundraising edge he rode four years ago. The incumbent president was outraised in July by Mitt Romney, the third consecutive month the challenger has held the …

Four years ago, the presidential campaign was a celebration of the little guy. Two thirds of the money raised by Barack Obama came online, and 34% of his money came from donors who gave less than $200. This cycle, Obama is doing even better than he did in 2008 with small donors. Through June, 2.4 million Americans have given to his …

Mitt Romney had a banner month in June. His campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $106 million, marking a large post-primary consolidation of Republican funds, and a full $35 million more than President Obama and …

Everyone deserves a holiday, and barking about politicians’ vacations is standard practice (See: President Obama going to Martha’s Vineyard during the recession). But it seems fair to suggest that politicians invite scrutiny of …

The Affordable Care Act isn’t the only consequential law whose fate the U.S. Supreme Court holds in its hands. Before the end of the month, the court is also expected to decide whether to hear a Montana campaign-finance case that …

The Obama campaign fundraising machine has debuted a new text message tool with encouraging results for the President’s bean counters. On Wednesday, the Obama campaign sent out an SMS message to cell phones and smart phones of tens of thousands of previous donors asking them to give more money. “Support Pres Obama in less than a minute,” …

The most recent filing by Restore Our Future, the technically independent group supporting the candidacy of Mitt Romney, revealed a number of firms—a for-profit school, several payday lenders, and a chemical company–whose …

The 2012 election is, in many ways, shaping up to be a contest defined by financial disparity. The rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement, predicated on the idea of an existential struggle between the 99% and the 1%, has …

Campaign reporters have blind spots. I can tell you, for instance, what happens when you go on BarackObama.com, or what happens when you sign up for the Barack Obama Facebook app, or what happens when you tell the campaign you want to donate money online. I cannot, however, tell you what happens after you donate the money online, since I …

Consider this campaign finance reformer’s nightmare scenario: Corporate interests flood a presidential election with money, ballooning campaign spending at six times the norm, and throwing a 5-to-1 spending advantage to the eventual winner largely because of one issue. This is not what’s happening in 2012. It’s what transpired in 1896: